i88 Goose-shooting 



and proceeded deliberately and intentionally to spoil our drive. He 

 left his rabbit-traps whenever he saw the Geese moving towards our 

 line, and walked up and down in front of us, preventing the Geese 

 keeping on their course and turning them over to the westward, 

 a really remarkable piece of spitefulness. With the best intentions, 

 he cf)uld not prevent the Geese keeping over the sand hills, though he 

 could push them out of our reach, and had I crossed the loch in time, 

 I should not onh' have got very good shooting myself, but turned 

 crowds of Geese back on to the other guns. Later on, I did manage 

 by wading to cross the loch, and after firing a couple of shots, found I 

 was without my cartridge bag. Mackintosh, who had gone north 

 to drive the geese, had taken it with him. For the next twenty 

 minutes or so, Barnacle poured over me and the empty gun, a lot 

 settling within easy shot of the bank I was lying under. C — had 

 two Barnacle, T — one, and self one, total four ; with ordinary 

 luck and decent management, we should have had twenty-five. 



On other days we could do nothing wrong. On January 24tli, 

 I sat down to lunch with eight White-fronts and one Grey-lag, the 

 result of three separate and very difficult crawls. On January 25th, 

 nine by luncheon (six Barnacle, two White-fronts, and one Grey-lag) ; 

 again a morning without a miss. 



January 30th : Bornish. — End of the frost ; heavy rain early, 

 which cleared off about 9.30 a.m. Mostly Barnacle, I hardly saw 

 a Grey Goose all day. We started stalking a large and very scattered 

 lot of Barnacle by the Ormaclett stacks. Thev rose before we had 

 finished our crawl, and some came over us. I got a pair (right-and- 

 left ; nothing else touched). T — bagged one. I crammed in two 

 other cartridges and fired at some rather distant ones. One came 

 down close to the Ormaclett farm, and was ultimately gathered. 

 After lunch, we drove the Chapel field north, past Bornish. I got 

 two (right-and-left ; nothing else touched) and T — one. 



We then went to the Ardvulj point, where we found Geese, and, 

 unhappily, a crofter, the latter ostensibly collecting tangle. He 

 spent his time spoiling our intended stalks. Three times the Geese 

 settled right on the edge of the point, in a splendid position, and 

 three times he put them up. A really good chance of a fat family 

 shot on the ground spoilt by this infernal scoundrel. While waiting 

 on the rocks by the shore, a solitary Goose came flying along the edge, 

 which I could not make out. I shot it, and it proved to be a Brent, 

 a rare goose in S. Uist. My shot disturbed the Duck on the brackish 

 Ardvula loch, and a good flock of Scaup came over my head, from 

 which I extracted five, three of them in the finest plumage I have 

 ever seen. These were followed by a male Merganser, which I also 

 got, and so ended a day which was not bad, but should have been 

 much better. 



^th March, igi2. 



